Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is going to be a longer one part of
Speaker 1: the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
Speaker 1: take their days from great to awesome and any advice
Speaker 1: they have for the rest of us. Today, I am
Speaker 1: delighted to welcome Jenny Wood to the show. Jenny is
Speaker 1: a career expert and the author of the brand new
Speaker 1: book Wild Courage.
Speaker 2: So, Jenny, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me. Laura excited to have
Speaker 1: you here. So yeah, tell our listeners a little bit
Speaker 1: about yourself.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm in Boulder, Colorado. I've got two kids who
Speaker 3: are seven and nine. I spent eighteen years at Google,
Speaker 3: growing from entry level to executive, and I recently left
Speaker 3: to work on this book full time. It came out
Speaker 3: not too long ago, hit the New York Times bestseller list,
Speaker 3: which is so exciting, so awesome, and I have a
Speaker 3: goal to spread insane amounts of Wild Care into the
Speaker 3: world so that everybody can make their days go from
Speaker 3: great to awesome.
Speaker 1: Heay, well, then we're all about that there, So well,
Speaker 1: what are the ways that you kind of burst onto
Speaker 1: the scene a few years ago is a famous story
Speaker 1: of how you met your husband that this went a
Speaker 1: bit viral. Maybe you can tell our listeners about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, it's twenty eleven and I'm riding the New York
Speaker 3: City subway home from work when about twenty feet away
Speaker 3: from me stands this really good looking guy, gorgeous blue eyes,
Speaker 3: thick brown wavy hair. And even though I want to
Speaker 3: go up and talk to him, something holds me back.
Speaker 3: What if he's a convicted fella, what if he's married?
Speaker 3: What if a hundred people stare at me on this
Speaker 3: packed train? Well, I later came to realize that underneath
Speaker 3: those questions were fears that hold so many people back,
Speaker 3: because they're the same fears that held me back so
Speaker 3: much in life. Fear of uncertainty, fear of failure, and
Speaker 3: most importantly, fear of judgment of others. So I sit there,
Speaker 3: I do nothing as the train passes stop after stop
Speaker 3: after stop, and life passes me by. But I'm still
Speaker 3: so taken by him. So and make a deal with
Speaker 3: the universe. I say, if he gets off at my stop,
Speaker 3: then I'll try to strike up a conversation with him,
Speaker 3: and if not, then se LEVI. Well, he gets off
Speaker 3: at the next stop, which was not my stop, and
Speaker 3: I say, I like slump down in my chair so disappointed.
Speaker 4: And then all of a sudden, this.
Speaker 3: Wave of wild courage like washes over me and practically
Speaker 3: pushes me out of my subway seat and off the train.
Speaker 3: So I chase after him, tap him on the shoulder.
Speaker 3: I say, excuse me, I'm sorry to bother you. You're
Speaker 3: wearing gloves, so I can't tell if you're wearing a
Speaker 3: wedding ring. But in the event that you're not married,
Speaker 3: you were on my subway and I thought you were cute.
Speaker 3: Any chance I could give you my business card? Then
Speaker 3: I wait for what feels like forever, thinking this was
Speaker 3: a terrible idea. But he takes the card, calls the
Speaker 3: next day, asks me on a date a week later,
Speaker 3: and then three years later we get married. We've now
Speaker 3: been married eleven years happily. So wild courage, you know,
Speaker 3: changed my life in that moment, and then I started
Speaker 3: using it as a habit professionally throughout my days to
Speaker 3: be more productive, etc.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is exciting.
Speaker 1: I mean sometimes the things that we get inspired to
Speaker 1: do just have I mean repercussions like you couldn't even imagine.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting about the story. Of course you were
Speaker 1: telling this story from the place where it worked.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally. And you talk a.
Speaker 1: Little bit in your book about this, Right, we see
Speaker 1: I think the phrases, we see everything differently in the
Speaker 1: context of success. So let's talk about it because I
Speaker 1: think it's very important for people to realize that and
Speaker 1: how they're hearing stories.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's so.
Speaker 3: Interesting you bring that up. It's like survivorship bias. Right,
Speaker 3: so it's like, well it all worked out. Of course,
Speaker 3: you can go out and tell people to have wild courage,
Speaker 3: but the reality is like our failures fuel that success, right,
Speaker 3: you know, if you want to double your success as
Speaker 3: quadruple your failures. And wild Courage covers nine traits that
Speaker 3: create the bars of an invisible cage that keep you small.
Speaker 3: And I'm encouraging people to reclaim these nine traits. Those
Speaker 3: nine traits are weird, selfish, shameless, obsessed, nosy, manipulative, brutal, reckless,
Speaker 3: and bossy. And I think the move on that subway
Speaker 3: that day was reckless, right, reckless, redefine And my new
Speaker 3: words is the courage to take intelligent risk, to err
Speaker 3: on the side of action. Better to learn from your
Speaker 3: mistakes than waste time predicting the consequences of every decision.
Speaker 3: Think fast and fearless, and if you're on the fence,
Speaker 3: do it. But you bring up the good point of like, Okay,
Speaker 3: it worked out for you that day, but what about
Speaker 3: what it doesn't. The reason I advocate for it anyway
Speaker 3: is because those risks, those little mini risks, those moments
Speaker 3: of recklessness, as I call it, help build the building
Speaker 3: blocks of something great in the future, because it's it's
Speaker 3: it's building that muscle to ask the uncomfortable question, to
Speaker 3: ask your boss for a race, to ask the client
Speaker 3: you know, for an upsell, to ask a friend in
Speaker 3: a new city to go out to coffee.
Speaker 4: I've had so.
Speaker 3: Many failures, especially since leaving Google and being an entrepreneur.
Speaker 3: I had, you know, I wanted all these fellow authors
Speaker 3: and influencers to support the book, and a lot of
Speaker 3: them said yes. But I got so many ghosting responds
Speaker 3: or so many non responses right, and I got one
Speaker 3: from a really, really well known author that everybody would
Speaker 3: know this person's name, that was not just a no
Speaker 3: I'm not going to support it with my audience, but
Speaker 3: a blatant this is the end of our friendship and
Speaker 3: my mentorship with you, Jenny, because I don't think you know,
Speaker 3: I'm offended that you asked, basically, and it was really
Speaker 3: hard to stomach that rejection that like, flat out not
Speaker 3: just rejection, I'm not going to support you know, the
Speaker 3: book and with my audience, but just like and this
Speaker 3: is the end of our relationship. And so that's a
Speaker 3: perfect example of Yes. Sometimes you take that risk, you jump,
Speaker 3: you run off the subway, you ask for the raise,
Speaker 3: you ask for the client partnership, and you get told
Speaker 3: to flat out no, But you still keep going because
Speaker 3: there were the hundreds of people who said yes with
Speaker 3: massive audience, you know, millions of people in their audience.
Speaker 3: And so if I hadn't had the boldness, the wild
Speaker 3: courage to ask that person who happened to say no,
Speaker 3: it means I wouldn't have had the same courage to ask.
Speaker 4: The other people who did help me. And it's that
Speaker 4: muscle that you just have.
Speaker 3: To build over and over and over again. Even though
Speaker 3: sometimes you are going to fail. You are going to
Speaker 3: feel rejected, you are going to feel disappointed, you are
Speaker 3: going to feel depressed, which I did feel all of
Speaker 3: those things when that happened.
Speaker 4: But it's the marker of a leader when you can
Speaker 4: do that and keep going.
Speaker 1: Yeah that you realize a lot of times the response
Speaker 1: eventually to this, you know, discouragement, rejection.
Speaker 2: All that is like, oh well yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, if the guy on the subway had been like, yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: not not doing it, you'd been like, Okay, next guy,
Speaker 1: you know, move on.
Speaker 3: That's the thing, is, like, of those three fears that
Speaker 3: I help people push through with wild courage, fear of uncertainty,
Speaker 3: fear of failure, fear of judgment of others, the one
Speaker 3: that happens to plague me the most is fear of uncertainty.
Speaker 3: So I would have rather run off the subway and
Speaker 3: asked that guy and had him tell me a flat
Speaker 3: out no, then leave an uncertainty the rest of my
Speaker 3: life thinking what could have been. In fact, it's kind
Speaker 3: of a win win if he said no, I'm married.
Speaker 3: He gets to go home to his wife and kids
Speaker 3: and be like, I still got it, honey, I tell you,
Speaker 3: and I.
Speaker 4: Have my answer.
Speaker 3: It's like okay, no, no, nothing nothing venture, nothing lost.
Speaker 4: So you bring up a really good point, Laura.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, No, I've always said that with like I
Speaker 1: mean public speaking. I do a reasonable amount of it,
Speaker 1: and at the beginning is like it's a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know, nerve wracking to get up in front of people.
Speaker 1: And then you do enough of it and you realize
Speaker 1: some go great, some are fine, some go wrong, often
Speaker 1: for things.
Speaker 2: That have nothing to do with you.
Speaker 1: I mean they just announced like huge cost cutting right
Speaker 1: before you got up on stage.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a little.
Speaker 1: Different than if like the boss is giving out iPads
Speaker 1: right before you go on stage, Like the energy's a
Speaker 1: little different now the has nothing to do with you.
Speaker 2: And but you learn, oh well, you know that one bombed.
Speaker 3: Oh well, you know, and think about how much you learn,
Speaker 3: Like my entire business is keynote speaking now and I
Speaker 3: completely understand what you're saying, And think about how much
Speaker 3: you learn from the ones that don't go well, Like
Speaker 3: I made a huge mistake and a keynote a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks ago, and I asked for a confidence monitor
Speaker 3: so I could see we slide was coming next, and
Speaker 3: then they like reluctantly put it there.
Speaker 4: But then I later found out.
Speaker 3: Like that was a five hundred dollars cost to us, Jenny,
Speaker 3: so we wish we had known about that ahead of time.
Speaker 3: And I was like, oh my gosh, but like what
Speaker 3: an amazing learning Like I wouldn't have even thought that
Speaker 3: this would have been an incremental cost for them, And
Speaker 3: I felt really foolish, and you know, it's disappointed and
Speaker 3: maybe I was taking nosy too far. Nosey is the
Speaker 3: courage to get in statiably curious to you know, dig deeper.
Speaker 3: It's about how curious drowns out fear and pulls you
Speaker 3: toward what most is exciting to you. So use it
Speaker 3: as a compass, and it's all about like, yeah, don't
Speaker 3: be scared to ask a question. I asked a question, Hey,
Speaker 3: could you add a confidence monitor? But then sometimes without
Speaker 3: even realizing it, realizing it, you can take these nine
Speaker 3: traits too far, and I call those traite traps. And
Speaker 3: in that case, I didn't think I was taking it
Speaker 3: too far, but I later learned I had taken it
Speaker 3: too far, and now I know to be more thoughtful about,
Speaker 3: you know, the investment that the client is making, et cetera.
Speaker 4: So sometimes we get caught in these tradite traps. Without
Speaker 4: even knowing it.
Speaker 1: Absolutely all right, Well, we're going to take a quick
Speaker 1: ad break and then I will be back with more
Speaker 1: from Jenny Wood. Well, I am back with Jenny Wood,
Speaker 1: who is the author of the new book Wild Courage.
Speaker 1: Has spent her career at Google and now off on
Speaker 1: her own doing lots of speaking and writing and teaching
Speaker 1: and things like that. So, Jenny, you have a phrase
Speaker 1: for when people are going after goals that you want
Speaker 1: them to remember, which is rock, chalk talk and walk.
Speaker 2: I think I said that directly without tripping over it.
Speaker 4: Soday.
Speaker 1: You can talk a little bit about what that means.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, So rock chalk talk walk is goal setting
Speaker 3: in a nutshell. It's about how do you have the
Speaker 3: most productive hour in any day, right, or how do
Speaker 3: you have the most productive goals for a six month period?
Speaker 3: So rock is what's the big thing you want to accomplish.
Speaker 3: I set out to, you know, sell a lot of
Speaker 3: books the week this book came out, So I said,
Speaker 3: my big goal is to sell ten thousand US hardcover
Speaker 3: copies of Wild Courage by pup week. That was my
Speaker 3: rock and it was specific. It had a number in there, right,
Speaker 3: and I had a date. So it wasn't wishy washy,
Speaker 3: whether I.
Speaker 4: Achieved it or not.
Speaker 3: Chalk is I wrote it down so right here. Listeners
Speaker 3: can't see this, but I'm showing up a little sticky
Speaker 3: to Laura here.
Speaker 4: But here we go.
Speaker 3: It is just like it's on my monitor and it
Speaker 3: says that what I just stated written down so I
Speaker 3: could see it every day.
Speaker 4: That's chalk write it down.
Speaker 3: Talk is talk about it out loud, not in a
Speaker 3: MANIFESTI kind of way, but in a very practical, say
Speaker 3: it to people so they can help you kind of way.
Speaker 3: A lot of people say, well, how do I tastefully
Speaker 3: self promote at work?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Like, I don't want to share with my boss that
Speaker 3: I increased, you know, customer satisfaction year a year by
Speaker 3: by this percent.
Speaker 4: I'm like, no, they.
Speaker 3: Want to hear that, like they want to hear the
Speaker 3: awesome things you're doing because they can help you. So
Speaker 3: by talking about my goal out loud, people said, oh,
Speaker 3: let me introduce you to this other person, or you know,
Speaker 3: have you thought about this strategy? Have you thought about
Speaker 3: bulk sales for companies? So that's talk and then walk
Speaker 3: is what's it's walk the walk? What's the one thing
Speaker 3: you can do today, in this hour of your time,
Speaker 3: to be the most productive toward that goal. So, just
Speaker 3: to give another example, let's say your goal is to
Speaker 3: lose ten pounds. So maybe the walk is you're going
Speaker 3: to replace the big dishes in your kitchen with smaller dishes.
Speaker 3: And that's the one small step you can take to
Speaker 3: move you toward that big rock. So that's rock, chalk,
Speaker 3: talk and walk.
Speaker 2: Excellent, excellent.
Speaker 1: And you also talk a lot about betting on yourself,
Speaker 1: right that that part of being having this wild courage
Speaker 1: is the idea that you know, we need to bet
Speaker 1: on ourselves. I don't know if other people are going
Speaker 1: to do it or not, but you know, we at
Speaker 1: least need to put that level of support for ourselves.
Speaker 1: So somebody's listening to this in the car on the
Speaker 1: way to work. It's Tuesday. How practically can they bet
Speaker 1: on themselves today?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Well, I think when when you share bet I.
Speaker 2: Forgot it'll be on Wednesday. But okay, it is Wednesday.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, means whether it is Tuesday or Wednesday or Saturday.
Speaker 3: You know, we think we hear betting on ourselves and
Speaker 3: we think quit your job to be an entrepreneur. But
Speaker 3: you can bet on yourself directly within your own team,
Speaker 3: within your own organization, with your in your own company.
Speaker 3: What might that look like? This comes out of the
Speaker 3: shameless trait. Shameless is the courage to stand behind your
Speaker 3: efforts and abilities. It's about finding your swagger. It goes
Speaker 3: back to kind of how do you thoughtfully self promote
Speaker 3: to your managers that you can get that raise, get
Speaker 3: that promotion, and bet on yourself within your organization. So
Speaker 3: try sending what I call a shameless Monday email. It
Speaker 3: should take no more than fifteen minutes. It's four bullets,
Speaker 3: two things you're proud of from last week and two
Speaker 3: things you're excited about this week. Four bullets, really.
Speaker 4: Short and sweet.
Speaker 3: It's it's not a productivity report. It's simply sharing highlights.
Speaker 3: Even better if you use numbers like I referenced before.
Speaker 3: But it's just sharing you know what's been going on
Speaker 3: in your world. As a Google exact Laura, I think
Speaker 3: I only saw this about ten percent of the time,
Speaker 3: but the people who did this always stood out as
Speaker 3: rockstar performers.
Speaker 4: I always knew what they were working on.
Speaker 3: It was different than them bringing it to me in
Speaker 3: our regular weekly one on one because this is something
Speaker 3: that I, as their boss, could see my boss on
Speaker 3: and then maybe that gets spread to other people and
Speaker 3: it just shows that they're proactive. It shows that they're
Speaker 3: you know, proud of what they've accomplished, and it gives
Speaker 3: me an opportunity to give feedback if I need to.
Speaker 4: And it's a.
Speaker 3: Very effective tool to betting on yourself within your job,
Speaker 3: within your team, so that your boss falls in love
Speaker 3: with you absolutely.
Speaker 1: And you actually suggest that people use that word proud,
Speaker 1: Like you said, listen, two things you're proud of, but
Speaker 1: you actually want people to say, I'm proud of this.
Speaker 4: I mean, what's going on with that exactly? Well, it's
Speaker 4: just so rare.
Speaker 3: It's like we think that we have to underplay our
Speaker 3: or downplay our efforts and our abilities.
Speaker 4: So that's why I call it shameless.
Speaker 3: Right, what is the shame if you you know, did
Speaker 3: this marketing launch for the ath leisure line of the Fall, Right,
Speaker 3: what's the shame in saying our goal was seventy percent
Speaker 3: adoption and we got to eighty percent customer adoption whatever
Speaker 3: the metric is, Like, what is the shame in that?
Speaker 3: Like literally using the words I'm so proud of how
Speaker 3: this marketing launch went. I'm proud of this customer feedback.
Speaker 3: Here's a screenshot of it. I'm proud of this testimonial
Speaker 3: from a client, and we could do the same thing
Speaker 3: for you, you know, if you're an entrepreneur. We just
Speaker 3: hired a nanny recently and she does a bunch of
Speaker 3: stuff around the house in addition to being a nanny.
Speaker 3: She's amazing, and so in her email to us, she said,
Speaker 3: you know, I love being with kids, I'm happy to
Speaker 3: do grocery shopping, and I'm an exceptional cook. That's like
Speaker 3: taking I'm proud and dialing it way up to eleven.
Speaker 3: And I have to say one of the reasons I
Speaker 3: wanted to interview her was because she had the courage,
Speaker 3: the wild courage to say in an email, I'm an
Speaker 3: exceptional cook. I mean, of course you then got to
Speaker 3: have the goods to back it up. And she is
Speaker 3: a great cook. But like that really stands out and
Speaker 3: tells me so much. She's confident, she's she is an
Speaker 3: exceptional cook, and like, think how rare it is for
Speaker 3: someone to say something like that. So whether it's I'm
Speaker 3: proud or I'm really good at this, or these are
Speaker 3: my three power assets, you know, the three strengths I have.
Speaker 3: People oftentimes don't take time to identify what their three
Speaker 3: are mine or people leadership, stakeholder influence and building things
Speaker 3: from startup to scale, and whether I'm meeting my boss's
Speaker 3: boss or a mentor or a new customer. Like, I
Speaker 3: have those identified, I have them practiced, and I say
Speaker 3: them and I say that I'm proud of them, because
Speaker 3: that pride is contagious, and that positive energy is contagious.
Speaker 3: People want to work with people who they're excited by
Speaker 3: and like to partner with and who are positive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you suggest that people actually do come up
Speaker 1: with those power those three power statements and like work
Speaker 1: them in.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's all sorts of situations.
Speaker 1: Where people like say, introduce yourself, or hey, you know,
Speaker 1: I have somebody who want to be can you tell
Speaker 1: them a little bit about what you do, and then
Speaker 1: you launch into the three Exactly.
Speaker 3: I was coaching someone yesterday. I do a lot of
Speaker 3: executive coaching one on one in small groups, and I
Speaker 3: was coaching someone yesterday on an interview and she was like,
Speaker 3: but what if they don't ask me, you know, what
Speaker 3: my strengths are I'm like, Oh, it doesn't matter what
Speaker 3: they ask you. They could say, why do you want
Speaker 3: this job? Boom, Well I want this job because I'm
Speaker 3: really great at blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: Okay, well what are you most excited about in this job?
Speaker 4: Same thing?
Speaker 3: You know, to be able to leverage my three power assets.
Speaker 3: And I always encourage people to have two business skills
Speaker 3: and one soft skill one people skill in there. Just
Speaker 3: like your financial portfolio, your power assets make up your
Speaker 3: power portfolio. And just like your financial portfolio is a
Speaker 3: mix of stocks and bonds, you want your power portfolio
Speaker 3: to be a mix of people skills and hard business skills.
Speaker 3: So no matter what they ask you, a mentor a boss,
Speaker 3: you know, an interviewer, you can always drop those three
Speaker 3: strengths in. But it takes time to sit down and
Speaker 3: identify what they are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you don't like the phrase shameless plug or
Speaker 1: shameless self.
Speaker 2: We throw that around a lot. I mean, what because
Speaker 2: we've identified that.
Speaker 1: I guess the idea that talking about yourself is seen
Speaker 1: as bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I think it's I think it's such a
Speaker 4: great thing.
Speaker 3: By the way, it can really hurt you in your
Speaker 3: career if you if you don't someone, you know, because
Speaker 3: now that the book's doing well, and you know, people
Speaker 3: come to me asking for help, which of course I'm
Speaker 3: delighted to offer. Someone said, hey, i'd love to talk
Speaker 3: to you about the publishing industry, you know, would you
Speaker 3: have a conversation with me about agents?
Speaker 4: And like that's it.
Speaker 3: There were no numbers, there was no kind of like
Speaker 3: anything promoting the great work this person had done. So
Speaker 3: I just initially thought, if this is probably when I
Speaker 3: can brush off, right. I'm human, I try to be
Speaker 3: productive all so I can't take every meeting that comes
Speaker 3: my way. And then I said, you know, do you
Speaker 3: have any examples of you know, do you have an audience?
Speaker 3: Do you have any followers on social media? That's obviously
Speaker 3: important for the publishing industry. She came back, She wrote
Speaker 3: me back, She's like, well, I have two hundred and
Speaker 3: seventy thousand followers across social media. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: my gosh, if you had the if you and she
Speaker 3: probably felt like, oh, it's shameless to say that in
Speaker 3: my first email. No, that's exactly what I want to know.
Speaker 3: It is so much more efficient. It helps me be
Speaker 3: more productive. But you saving me the time of A
Speaker 3: assuming that you are totally starting out, you have no following,
Speaker 3: but B I then don't have to come back and
Speaker 3: ask you, right, totally inefficient that i'd write back and
Speaker 3: ask her the question. So, you know, when we talk
Speaker 3: about a shameless plug, I have this example of someone
Speaker 3: was in a meeting with thirty people and we were
Speaker 3: talking about something that was related to this thing she
Speaker 3: just built, and she said, well, this is a shameless plug,
Speaker 3: but I built this spreadsheet. I'm putting it here in
Speaker 3: the group chat, and if anyone uses it, you might
Speaker 3: find it saves you sometime.
Speaker 4: The emojis on the virtual meeting went gaga.
Speaker 3: Everyone's like, oh my gosh, this is gonna save me
Speaker 3: thirty minutes every time I do this project. And so like,
Speaker 3: what's the shame and sharing a tool that's going to
Speaker 3: be helpful and help other people be productive, and yet
Speaker 3: we still are conditioned to feel like we have to
Speaker 3: underplay our efforts. We have to say this is a shameless,
Speaker 3: shameless plug. But it's like, no, be proud of what
Speaker 3: you put out there. What I would have wanted her
Speaker 3: to say was I'm proud of this resource I put together,
Speaker 3: and I think we'll save you each a half hour.
Speaker 1: I love anything that saves me half an hour, So
Speaker 1: it saves me five minutes, I'm all over that. So
Speaker 1: all right, well, we're gonna take one more quick ad
Speaker 1: break and I will be back with more from Jenny Wood. Well,
Speaker 1: I am back with Jenny Wood, who's the author of
Speaker 1: Wild Courage, just how to go after what you want
Speaker 1: and get it. So, Jenny, we always like to talk
Speaker 1: about routines here on this show. I'm wondering if you
Speaker 1: personally have any routines that help make you more effective?
Speaker 3: Well, can I talk about one that I have started
Speaker 3: this morning?
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, today is as good a day as any,
Speaker 1: So if we started this morning, that's awesome.
Speaker 3: They say the best time to plant a tree is
Speaker 3: twenty years ago. The second best time is today. So
Speaker 3: I started this today even though for ages I've been
Speaker 3: wanting to do it.
Speaker 4: And this would be part of what I call brutal.
Speaker 3: Right, this is the trait that's the courage to protect
Speaker 3: your time and energy. It's the power of know It
Speaker 3: also gets into people pleasing, how people pleasing pleases no
Speaker 3: one and keeps you small.
Speaker 4: But this is real. Brutal is about.
Speaker 3: Ruthless prioritization at its core, and it's something I've struggled
Speaker 3: with for a long time, is charging my phone next
Speaker 3: to me in my bed.
Speaker 4: And this is probably like the oldest trick in.
Speaker 3: The book to most of you listening, but I'm new
Speaker 3: to it, and I've realized that, you know, it's something
Speaker 3: I share in Wild Courage is if you don't have
Speaker 3: the time, the energy, or the capacity to respond to
Speaker 3: an email, don't check it. So like if you're walking
Speaker 3: to the subway or you know, to your car in
Speaker 3: the parking lot from work, if you still work in
Speaker 3: an office, like there's really no point to scroll through
Speaker 3: your work email if you're not going to action and
Speaker 3: write back to that email in that moment, which you're
Speaker 3: probably not. If you're walking, you might get hit by
Speaker 3: a car. Well, I was finding the same thing would
Speaker 3: happen first thing in the morning. I would pull up
Speaker 3: my phone and then for like a good forty five minutes,
Speaker 3: while my eyes are you know, still half closed, I
Speaker 3: would scan through DMS on LinkedIn because I'm very active there.
Speaker 3: I post every day. I'd scan through my inbox. I'd
Speaker 3: listen to maybe a voice memo from someone on my team,
Speaker 3: but I just wouldn't action anything, and then I would
Speaker 3: forget things I would not get back to them. So
Speaker 3: I kind of applied that same strategy I talk about
Speaker 3: in the brutal trait, which is if you can't action it,
Speaker 3: don't read it. And so for the first time last night,
Speaker 3: I charged my phone in another room. My old boss
Speaker 3: would say, charge it on a different floor of the
Speaker 3: house if you have more than one floor, like make
Speaker 3: it really hard to get to. And then today when
Speaker 3: I sat down at my computer, I actually could read
Speaker 3: the emails and respond real time.
Speaker 4: And that is brutal.
Speaker 3: It is not easy to do that because there are
Speaker 3: so many reasons I would say I need to charge
Speaker 3: it next to my bed. But it's a ten dollars
Speaker 3: investment in an alarm clock and a digital you know,
Speaker 3: digital clock. But I'm trying this out and I'm hoping
Speaker 3: that it can stick. Because it is it'll.
Speaker 4: Make a difference for me for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now that's always what trips people up. They're like,
Speaker 2: but I need it as my alarm.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, guess what people had alarms We didn't
Speaker 1: magically wake up prior to smartphones.
Speaker 2: There's there's a.
Speaker 1: Way to solve this problem exactly.
Speaker 2: You'll figure it out. You'll figure it out.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: One thing I always ask people, Jenny, is what is
Speaker 1: something you've done recently to take a day from great
Speaker 1: to awesome? So obviously charging your phone somewhere else is
Speaker 1: going to hopefully take your days from great to us
Speaker 1: I'm but I wonder if you have anything else for us.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: One of the I think that I oftentimes live in
Speaker 3: a maximizer world. And this gets a little into the
Speaker 3: trade traps again. So this is about the obsessed trait.
Speaker 3: Obsessed is the courage to set your own standard, to
Speaker 3: push perform persists. It's to let your energy fuel or
Speaker 3: your enthusiasm really to feel like any project or any goal.
Speaker 3: And I can take that a little bit too far.
Speaker 3: And there's this research by psychologists and professor at Swarthmore University,
Speaker 3: Barry Schwartz, who talks about maximizers versus satisficers. Maximizers want
Speaker 3: to dial any project up to eleven. They want to
Speaker 3: ace every test. They want to, you know, run the marathon.
Speaker 4: And have the fastest time. And I tend to fall.
Speaker 3: Into that category of maximizers. However, there are also satisficers
Speaker 3: who are okay being an eighty out of one hundred
Speaker 3: on a lot of things. And the research suggests that
Speaker 3: while maximizers might get slightly better results, the satisficers can
Speaker 3: sometimes be happier. And since I think it's not a
Speaker 3: bad thing to optimize for happiness when you're taking your
Speaker 3: days from great to awesome, you know, I've tapped a
Speaker 3: couple of times in this past week into being a
Speaker 3: satisficer and not my natural inclination of a maximizer. Again,
Speaker 3: this gets into trade traps. Basically, it's like where do
Speaker 3: I want to be obsessed? What projects should be an
Speaker 3: eleven out of ten, and what projects.
Speaker 4: Can be an eight out of ten?
Speaker 3: And so I try to not get caught in a
Speaker 3: trait trap by taking obsessed too far on too many
Speaker 3: different things. So this week I had some good opportunities,
Speaker 3: especially spending time with my kids. I just came back
Speaker 3: from a field trip with my seven year old daughter.
Speaker 3: I drove them to choir a couple of times this week,
Speaker 3: went to a field day yesterday at school, and so
Speaker 3: it forced me to be a satisficer around a couple
Speaker 3: of projects I had brewing for work, and it actually
Speaker 3: felt really, really great to be more discerning about where
Speaker 3: I had to just really squeeze every last ounce of
Speaker 3: productivity into a project, and where I could say, eh,
Speaker 3: good enough, I'm going to go spend some time with
Speaker 3: my kids. And that made me my That's made this
Speaker 3: week awesome and not just great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm one hundred percent of satisficer on so many
Speaker 1: things I don't like, you know, looking at the universe
Speaker 1: of options, I want people to bring me three Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I go with one of those three. They're
Speaker 2: going to be great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, That's that's something I share in Bossy. Bossy is
Speaker 3: the courage to see others to success, and it's all
Speaker 3: about being a strong leader. And one of the things
Speaker 3: I share is leaders love threes. Give three options and
Speaker 3: then have a POV to your leader, Right, Like, giving
Speaker 3: three options shows that you can look at things from
Speaker 3: multiple perspectives.
Speaker 4: But having a perspective, hey.
Speaker 3: We could you know, we could sell vanilla ice cream,
Speaker 3: chocolate ice cream, or strawberry ice cream next year if
Speaker 3: you're you know, the VP talking to the CEO, and.
Speaker 4: I recommend we go with strawberry.
Speaker 3: Right. Giving those three options shows that you've got diverse
Speaker 3: perspectives that you're considering. But the thing that your c
Speaker 3: suite is looking for as a leader, if you want
Speaker 3: to be a rising leader, is do you have the courage,
Speaker 3: the wild courage to have a perspective to pick one
Speaker 3: of those three options and oftentimes that senior leader will
Speaker 3: say yeah, let's go for it. Or if they say no,
Speaker 3: then you've got really good data on their opinion, which
Speaker 3: you don't always have. But have the wild courage to
Speaker 3: give three options and have a stance on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely so, Jenny, what are you looking forward to
Speaker 1: right now?
Speaker 3: Hmmm, Well, it's really fun to partner with companies and
Speaker 3: you know, different leadership teams to help them tap into
Speaker 3: their wild courage and to improve employee engagement and to
Speaker 3: thrive through change. Right there's so much going on with
Speaker 3: AI and the economy and politically and in organizations restructuring
Speaker 3: that I think everyone is just looking for a dose
Speaker 3: of realistic motivation and how they can thrive more at
Speaker 3: work and also in life. And so just all the
Speaker 3: incredible partnerships that are coming up with different companies, their
Speaker 3: leadership teams or even their entry level employees because they
Speaker 3: want to get them started on the right foot and
Speaker 3: hit the ground running. That's what I'm most looking forward
Speaker 3: to is just bringing this work to more and more
Speaker 3: companies because it is so much fun to partner with
Speaker 3: people on awesome.
Speaker 2: And where can people find you?
Speaker 4: It's Jennywood dot com.
Speaker 3: They can find me there and reach out to me
Speaker 3: for speaking engagements or workshops, or buying the book for
Speaker 3: their organization or to excellent excellent.
Speaker 1: Well, Jenny, thank you so much for joining us. Thank
Speaker 1: you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback on
Speaker 1: this or any other episode, you can always reach me
Speaker 1: at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: this is Laura, Thanks for listening, and here's to making
Speaker 1: the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
Speaker 1: If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
Speaker 1: me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
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